


even at our swiftest speed we couldn't break from the concrete

by slimskim



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Depression, F/M, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Sexual Content, POV Second Person, Sibling Incest, and this is just for fun (sadness) so just kick back with some apple juice and chillax., in which dipper is fucked up mabel just wants him to be happy and they love each other too much, they're like 18 in this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 00:11:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16862614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slimskim/pseuds/slimskim
Summary: It started because you needed help.It ended because you weren’t allowed to keep her.





	even at our swiftest speed we couldn't break from the concrete

> _“some people are meant to fall in love with each other but not meant to be together.”_
> 
> * * *
> 
>  

You stare down at the glossy picture in your hands - it’s worn around the edges even though it’s not old, and there are dried tear-shaped blotches dotting it like weak, dimming stars.

You run your thumb across her face and ( _plop_ ), another bright ball of gas cycles through its billion-year life span at warp speed and shrivels up and evaporates into her smile.

You angrily rub at your eyes and you know it’s just going to make them splotchy and red, but you don’t care because they’re already tinged with sleeplessness, they’re already bloodshot and bruised aubergine.

You glance back at the photograph and you’re so tired and you don’t understand how this snapshot she’s frozen in happened a year ago because you remember this moment - this small, insignificant parentheses in time - like it had happened mere minutes ago.

And ( _flash_ ) you’re both naked and you’re lying next to her and she’s wrapped up in your blue sheets and you’re lazily tracing constellations on her arms and chest and collarbones ( _flash_ ) her hair is spread out around her head like she’s underwater and there’s an imprint where her long forgotten headband was ( _flash_ ) her cheeks are warm and flushed and there’s a shiny purple heart sticker on one and her right forearm is resting on her forehead as she breathes slowly, her lips slightly quirked up in contentment ( _flash_ ) near her wrist you draw a short line and then curve it down slightly and then shoot it straight across and down and to the left and back up again, and it only takes her a second and she starts giggling, says, “Ohmigosh, you’re such a doofus,” and then runs her fingers identically over the birthmark covered by your sweaty hair, and

( _flash_ )

You take her all in at once and reach onto your nightstand, grabbing your camera, and you stand over her and dig your toes into her sides where you know she’s most ticklish and she starts laughing and you’re both so happy and you don’t want this to ever stop and you capture her, suspended forever like this, with a click.

( _flash, flash_ )

You sigh and stick the photo back into one of the dusty old books on your shelf and think,  _we’re okay we’re just siblings we’re okay we’re just siblings we’re okay we’re just siblings._

It’s futile, a vain attempt to convince yourself, but it never works because Mabel? She  _is_  okay. Not completely, not by any standards, but she’s… she’s fine.

But you? You’ve never felt more desperate, more pointless, more tragic.

You’ve fought more monsters than you can count, but not even your brain, not even The Journal, can fix this harrowing monster twisting itself inside you.

/

She is everything and you are not.

She is optimistic and bright and wonderful and you are realistic and bitter and numb.

It’s kind of funny, you think, that you’d always been the savior, the one who always protected everyone but yourself, and so you destroyed the very thing that meant more to you than anything in order to protect her (always her) even if it meant annihilating yourself in the process.

/

You walk down the stairs, your skin prickling and eyelids heavy and fingers shaking, reaching, grasping for  _something_.

It doesn’t faze you anymore, though, you’ve felt this way ever since you let her go and it’s okay, it’s alright, you’re  _fine_. (That’s what you keep telling yourself, anyway.)

You avoid that one glittery pink spot on the tenth stair from when Mabel spilled her nail polish and the barely noticeable blood stain on the sixth stair from when she fell and scraped her knee when she was nine and the creaky third stair where you first kissed and she tasted like strawberry lipgloss.

You finally make it to the bottom after what feels like an eternity because time, it passes and ticks by now like you’re in slow-motion, like you’re made of sluggish molasses, like everything inside of you is so heavy, weighing you down so that you can only walk at a funeral pace.

You drag your feet, clad in beaten-up Converse, into the living room while fussing with the strings of your hoodie, trying to make them even.

You hear a noise, though, and you stop walking and lift your head up languidly. Your eyes land on the couch and you let a strangled noise out of your throat and drop one of your hands, the other still tugging on one of the strings that is now much longer than the other.

Mabel is beneath some bottle-blonde boy from your math class ( _Brian? Nick? Chris?_  you don’t remember) and he has one hand twined through her long chestnut hair, the other pressing into her thigh, and he’s pressing kisses all over her face, making her giggle and half-heartedly swat at him.

She hears you (she always does) and looks at you upside-down from over the arm of the couch. “Uh, hey, bro-bro! You know Ethan, right?” She nervously gestures at him and he untangles his hand from her fluffy tresses and lifts it in a half-wave.

And, oh. Oh, his name is Ethan. Oh, he’s touching her. Oh, he’s where you should be. Oh. Oh.

Oh.

You swallow hard, bile rising in your throat, and he’s raising a questioning eyebrow at you and Mabel is staring at you, her honey-brown eyes boring into your identical ones, saying,  _this is what we agreed on, remember? this is what you told me to do. this is what you wanted this is for you what are you doing what are you doing what are you doing?_

You’re still frozen and your hands are still shaking and you’re still blinking at them and then an old, familiar voice is making a reappearance in your mind, is saying, “ _It’s funny how stupid you are,_ ” and then you’re snapped out of your trance and you’re tugging at your hair and grabbing your keys from the bowl next to the front door and all but running to the car you share with Mabel, avoiding her and Ethan’s incredulous looks.

You wrench open the door and get in, breathing heavily. You can still hear his nail-screeching laugh and you bang your head against the steering wheel, yelling, “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” over and over until your throat is raw and scratchy.

You hear a whisper of, “Y'know, kid, you’re looking awfully desperate these days,” and more laughter and you scream, “ _Get out_  of my  _fucking_  head!”, your voice coming out cracked and broken, and the laughing fades out and you sigh, wiping your wet cheeks.

You glance up and see Mabel looking at you from the window with a sad frown on her face, because now she knows, she understands what happened, and you know that she’s probably about to ask Ethan to leave and is probably about to come press her lips against the dark purple bruises under your eyes and the salty tears slipping from them and against your trembling lips, and you can’t do this to her, you can’t let this happen, and so you shake your head and look away from her, starting the ignition and pulling out into the darkness, letting it envelope you whole because that’s what you are.

/

You are Disease.

You are Rejection.

You are Jealousy.

You are Misery.

You are Despair.

/

You and Mabel were born on two different days, technically.

She was born at 11:57 PM on a Tuesday, warm and hiccuping and full of grace.

You were born at 12:02 AM on a Wednesday, screaming and blue and full of woe.

/

You’re on your bed and she’s on top of you and your arms are wrapped around her tight. Her lips are moving against yours, your tongues fighting each other for dominance.

Something doesn’t feel right though and your stomach is twisting and you think you hear a sound from downstairs and you pull away and look around frantically.

Mabel sighs, blowing her bangs out of her eyes, and says, slightly annoyed but not really because it’s rare for something to actually get on her nerves, “Mom and dad are at work and the door is locked, doofus.”

You stare at the doorknob, focusing on the chipping white paint around it, and reply, “I know, it’s just…”

She huffs lightly and pulls you back into a kiss. “Would you stop,” she mouths into your neck, “ _worrying_  so much, ya nerd?”

You snort sharply and your voice gets high and pubescent. “How am I supposed to  _stop worrying_ , Mabel?! You’re my  _sister_! You’re my sister and I’m  _fucking_  you!”

She sits up and bites her lip, cocking her head. “ _Dipper_ …” she trails off, her tone warning, her voice choked. And you know. You get it. You felt bad the second the words left your mouth because you had both agreed that you wouldn’t talk about it, not like this. You had both said that you were just going to let it be what it was and not ruin it with technicalities and complications and talk of how wrong and sinful and vile it was. But you never thought it’d get this far and you can’t ever get her off your mind and you’re constantly scared shitless and she never is.

And so you sit up too, causing her to slide onto your calves, and wail exasperatedly, “Stop pretending this doesn’t terrify you!”

And you see her swallow hard and blink back the wetness in her eyes. She says lowly, “D'you really think I’m not scared, Dipper?” A single tear escapes and rolls down her red cheek and her chest heaves and you visibly deflate.

“Hey,” you sigh, “Mabes, come on, don’t cry.” Splotches of dust scatter around her, illuminated by the waning sunlight straining itself through the slots in your blinds, and the curves of her body are obscured by the remaining shadows bouncing around the room and out of the corner of your eye you see a picture on your bookshelf of you and her and Grunkle Stan when you were twelve and you both look so happy and so normal and nothing had fucked you up yet and flickers of moments flash past you of the two of you almost getting caught by your parents and the distant, petrified look in her eyes every time it happened and of all the times you’ve put her in danger, put her happiness and her life at stake.

And suddenly it’s eating you alive because she’s so wonderful and brilliant and incredible, and if anyone deserves everything it’s her and you can’t give her that, not really, and you know that you can’t hold on to this fantasy that you’re going to be able to have her and this forever and for the first time in your life, you feel like you’re dying. Your hands graze her sides lightly and you mumble, your voice tight because you’re choking, “Mabel, I don’t think we can do this anymore.”

Her eyes flutter open, shut  _one two three four_  times and you know a collection of dumb words she’s made up are running through her head and, “What? Come on, Dip, don’t… you and your overthinkin’ brain are just overreacting.”

Cosmos rain down around you and galaxies are exploding and you’re on fire.

“No, Mabel, it’s just. It’s getting too risky and we just… I don’t know. We can’t keep this up our whole lives, y'know?” Your words are quiet, sad, forced. You lean forward to press kisses and hot tears into her collarbones and you breathe into her skin, exhaling,  _I love you, I love you, I love you, please don’t forget I’m sorry but you should move on, find someone new, find someone you can hold hands with in public and I don’t know what’s wrong with me and I love you I love you I love you. Please._

She rests her head on top of yours, running her fingers through your messy hair over and over again and you know she’s trying to decipher you like she used to be able to when you were younger and untainted by ghastly ordeals even though you both know she can only read parts of you now, but she still murmurs out a small, “Okay, bro,” and then says a minute later with a slight whine, gesturing between the two of you, “Aw heck, Dip, can we maybe possibly totally start this tomorrow and get on with these shenanigans?”

You chuckle half-heartedly and she takes this as a yes and starts sucking on the tender skin on your neck and you’re covered in lies and scars, but for a short moment you stop thinking so much and you let go.

/

The water is too high in the bathtub and it’s too cold and you’re curled up in it in the fetal position, blowing air bubbles out of your nose and watching as they float up to the surface.

You’re drunk and you’re having flashbacks of things that seem like they never existed at all except they did and you keep hoping that maybe you’ll drown.

You blindly reach up and try to grab the half-empty bottle of Vodka you placed next to her shampoo but end up knocking a jar of silver glitter over (you’d long ago stopped being surprised at the places Mabel left things) and it spills into the tub.

As the sparkles surround you, suspended and sinking and shimmering, you let yourself cry and you can’t breathe and water fills your lungs and you scream because no one can hear it and this is the last time you feel anything but numb.

/

You can’t remember really when you first started thinking of Mabel as something surreal, as this glorified piece of your heart, but you can remember the exact moment that you fell in love with her.

It was the summer right before you turned sixteen and it was late - you don’t know what time - and you were lying on the couch next to each other and your pinkies were interlocked, making infinite meaningless promises. The TV was on but it was muted, and it was splashing shades of dark blue across your faces and you were both falling asleep and intergalactic clusters of dust were floating around you in the still air, and she kept saying these ridiculous things and her voice was groggy around the edges, but soft with sleep, and you kept nodding and muttering out incoherent agreements and tightening your intertwined fingers.

And you glanced over at her and she was all of these things - unpredictable and lovely and beautiful - and her hair was frizzy and sticking up all over the place and there was dried drool on her cheek and the hum of the air conditioner was the only sound in the room and you had never wanted anyone more.

And you swallowed hard and blinked and looked away because in that brief moment, everything came crashing into your chest and lungs and you were suffocating and you knew you were beyond gone for her.

/

It started because you needed help.

You had this heaviness on your bones that someone your age shouldn’t have and you didn’t know what to do and you grasped onto her because she was the only thing you’d ever been sure of.

/

It ended because you weren’t allowed to keep her.

You knew this from the beginning and so did she and even if either of you tried to stop it from happening, you couldn’t.

You knew this.

You knew this, and for some reason, it still feels like burning alive.

/

It’s Christmas and you and Mabel aren’t wearing matching ugly sweaters like you do every year and you’re seated on opposite sides of the tree and if your parents have noticed, they haven’t said anything.

You’re forcing enthusiasm, choking out gratitude, and she’s genuinely happy, you know she is, but there’s something missing too, something only you can see.

And suddenly she’s right next to you and you inhale sharply and she’s nudging your leg with hers and pointing at your mom holding a camera.

“Smile!” your mom calls cheerfully while your dad dances around behind her, and Mabel grins and wraps an arm around your shoulders, pulling you close, close, close. And you swallow bile and force your lips up into a foreign, forgotten concept and there’s no substance - it’s all teeth and anguish - and your parents don’t notice, but of course Mabel does, and she tugs you even closer and presses her cheek against yours, and your mom snaps the picture.

/

And who cares who cares who cares, you draw smiley faces on fogged-up windows of cars to be ironic, and what is the fucking  _point_  of it all?

You sit down in the middle of an empty parking lot, your legs stretched out in front of you, and you’re looking at the sky, at the collection of stars that make up your namesake, and it feels like a joke and a boy in a Jeep is driving by, is stopping and asking if you’re okay, and you’re laughing and blood is pouring out of your mouth.

You don't remember what happened but your teeth are crimson and there’s dirt under your fingernails, and you’re still laughing, hollow and raw.

You want to shout,  _Nononono, I’ve seen gnomes and mermen and shapeshifters and zombies almost ate me once and an insidious omnipresent entity pushed me out of my own goddamn body and oh yeah, right, also I’m in love with my fucking_ twin sister _, so no no no no no no, I’m not_ okay _._

But you don’t, because you can’t, because he would laugh in your face, because you’re a tragic, lifeless mess, so you just croak out a, “Yeah, man.”

And no more sound is coming out of your mangled throat and the boy is driving away and the blood drips onto your hands and you fumble around for your phone in your back pocket and smear the sticky redness onto the screen as you try to unlock it.

You dial Mabel’s number and she answers on the first ring with a, “Whazzzzup broseph?” You hear laughter in the background and she shushes them, says, “Dip?”

A choked sob comes out of your mouth and you weren’t expecting it, and you drop the phone on the hard asphalt and you still hear her saying your name.

You stand up and smash it with your heel, then walk towards the busy main road and stand on the edge of it with your hands in your pockets, the speeding cars whooshing by you in bursts of wind and the headlights and taillights illuminating you and the world in dim, electric reds and yellows.

/

You’re making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the kitchen when Mabel bursts in the back door, dirty and barefoot, skipping and twirling her way over to you, clutching a bunch of daisies tightly in one hand.

You raise an eyebrow when she finally makes her way over to you. “Hey, weirdo,” you chuckle.

She hums in acknowledgement and starts sticking the flowers in your messy hair and you start laughing, trying to swat her hands away.

When she keeps at it, you say, “I didn’t want it to come to this, but…” and you wiggle your fingers and dig them into her sides. She jumps and drops the daisies in surprise, even though you know she knew it was coming.

“Git outta here, ya giant dweeb,” she chortles, giggling and attempting to twist away.

“Never!” you shout, “Alpha twin!”

She gasps, “Oh no you  _dit-ent_!” and before you can process what’s happening, she’s jumping on you, taking you both down to the floor. The wilting flowers are crushed underneath you as she sits on your chest and goes for all your ticklish spots.

“Mabel! Mabel, oh my god,  _stop_!” you guffaw.

“Admit that I’m the Alpha twin!” she shrieks, relentless.

You wheeze, “Fine, fine, you’re the Alpha twin!”

She finally stops and then pumps her fist in the air, chanting, “ _Alpha twin! Alpha twin! Alpha twin!_ ”

You shake your head in amusement and trace your fingers over her back lightly.

“You’re ridiculous,” you say, a small smile on your face.

“Yeah, but you love it,” she retorts, and she looks down at you with dirt smeared on her cheek and chapped lips and her purple strawberry headband askew, and you take her in, try to capture this in your mind.

Everything is still, paused for a moment, and then she shifts her weight and leans down, capturing your mouth with hers while playing with one of the daisies still entangled in your mop of hair.

The kiss is soft, and you sigh out  _i love you i love you i love you_  onto her tongue and wrap your arms around her thighs, pulling her up further, nearer, and then the front door slams and the snow globe you’re suspended in shatters.

You break apart with wide eyes like you’ve burned each other. You stand up quickly and continue spreading jam onto the forgotten bread, and Mabel hops onto the counter next to you, swinging her legs and sticking her fingers in the peanut butter.

Your dad walks into the kitchen, in the midst of undoing his tie, and greets you with a, “Hey kiddos!”

You groan quietly and Mabel snorts. “Hey, dad,” she says, sucking on her fingers and pulling them out slowly, one by one. She glances at your heated cheeks and smirks.

And your dad flits around the room, opening and sticking his head in the fridge and the pantry and the cabinets, oblivious to Mabel’s heavy-lidded eyes and the uncomfortable growing bulge in your jeans.

/

You had always looked at her like she hung the stars in the sky.

It had never gone unnoticed; everyone always realized, always smiled in that “how wonderful and rare that you two are so close” way.

If she was the sun, all bright smiles and golden humor and warmth, you were the moon, all shadows and sleepless, purple eyes that held too much but not enough; that were filled with a sort of emptiness that made it distinctly clear that something was wrong within you.

But you glowed just enough to make everyone so hyper-aware of you and your beauty and your intelligence that they forgot that you were mostly made of dark sadness.

And when you didn’t - when it would go away - she was always there, filling the whole room with her brilliant enigma, distracting them from seeing that you had disappeared and collapsed into yourself.

/

You and Mabel used to go to diners at 2AM, where you would both order chocolate milk and blow bubbles in it with your straws.

You would look around at the exoskeletons of people spread out into corner booths, drinking either coffee as bitter as themselves or coffee with too much sugar to keep themselves awake because they’re afraid of what they’ll see when they fall asleep.

You would look at the vacant eyes and see their hollow ribcages in them, would watch the way they look out the windows like there’s an answer to their emptiness in the flashing neon signs or the dark, shadowy road or the dim, flickering street lamps.

Every person in a diner at that time has some pathetic story, and they all share the same characteristics and their hands always shake too much.

And it always made you swallow too hard and it made your eyes sting, but you would look back at Mabel, and she was always so tireless and so alive, such a stark contrast to the dead, lethargic bodies surrounding her.

She was this orbiting ball of light, spilling it on everything she touched, and back then, you embraced it, you let the little, tiny piece of Mabel inside of you seep out through your static electric fingertips like she did, the both of you shocking life into the stale air.

Your delirious laughter would fill the spaces in the too-quiet building, blanketing it in your ignorant, careless youth, pestering a smile out of even the most hardened, fucked-up loner there.

/

You sit alone and cross-legged at a sticky table towards the back of the diner, the shiny red vinyl on the seat dingy and cracking.

Your chocolate milk has been replaced by coffee as dark as storm clouds, and every time you take a sip of it, the liquid burns your throat.

You look down at your hands and wonder when they started shaking.

/

You’re sitting on the curb outside of your school, a lit but barely smoked cigarette dangling from your trembling fingers.

Mabel comes around the corner, letting out a sigh of relief when she sees you. She kneels in front of you but your eyes are unfocused, blurring her into obscurity.

“Dipper,” she says, and you lightly grunt in response, bringing the cigarette to your dry, perpetually blood-stained lips.

Before you can take a drag, Mabel snatches it out of your hand and throws it into the abyss of cars behind her. “Dipper,  _look at me_.”

Your eyes blink slowly and you try to focus on her, on the light spattering of freckles across her nose, on the hearts dotting her sweater, but all you can see is elongated pupils and yellow and instead of Mabel’s voice you hear a shrill mantra of  _pine tree pine tree pine tree_.

She grabs your face and usually she’d kiss you until you’d snap out of it but you’re not doing that anymore and you’re in public, so she pulls you impossibly close instead and whispers in your ear over and over, “He’s gone, he can’t hurt you anymore, everything’s fine,  _you’re_  fine.”

The glazed-over look in your eyes starts to fade and you go limp in her arms and croak, “I don’t wanna just be fine.”

“I know.” She looks down, frowns, and murmurs, “I hope you find someone who knows how to love you when you’re not okay.”

And you know (and Mabel knows) that she is the only one who will ever be able to because she is the only one who understands, who knows, who can look at you without any pity or disgust or confusion in her eyes.

It’s always been her and it always will be her.

You pull out another cigarette and light it; breathe in the nicotine and the chemicals and let them blacken your throat. Mabel grimaces but moves to sit beside you anyway.

The bell rings and as the loud voices of hundreds of kids filter outside and the almost cool wind of a Piedmont winter surrounds you, you say in an exhale of smoke, “You wanna know what Grunkle Stan told me once?”

She glances over at you with a tentative look and an eyebrow raised, and it’s such a  _you_  look that it makes your stomach churn.

You close your eyes and say, “Love has no happy ending.”

/

You take one step into the Mystery Shack and you feel more at home than you have in you can’t even remember how long.

The old, creaking wood and jars of eyeballs and random souvenirs scattered around the room calm you and make your heart ache ever so slightly for an intangible childhood that you still long to have back.

Only you and Mabel are there, but you can almost imagine a teenage Wendy sitting behind the counter with her legs kicked up on it, reading a magazine and calling out a, “‘Sup?” and that Soos is fiddling with the vending machine with a screwdriver, and turning around with a, “Whassup dudes?” when he hears Wendy acknowledge you.

And it makes you want to cry for a short second - that aching whiff of nostalgia - but then Stan is bursting through the door, looking grayer and older but still the same, and he wraps his arms around the two of you, grunts, “Kids! Where ya been all my life?”

Mabel laughs and shrieks, “Grunkle Stan!” and you make a small noise of protest but really hide your first genuine smile in months into his chest, gripping onto the back of his familiar suit jacket just a little tighter.

/

Later, you sit on the roof watching the sky fade into shades of tangerine and magenta and mulberry and amber when you feel a presence beside you and immediately know it’s Mabel.

She sits down next to you, says, “Beautiful, huh?”

You glance over at her and she’s staring straight ahead, the light breeze slightly whipping through her hair, and you think,  _Not as beautiful as you_.

And her breath hitches and you tense for a second, irrationally fearing that she heard you, but then you tear your eyes off of her and notice what you realize she’s noticed. It’s Gabe, still with the same stupid blonde ponytail and still clad in all black, tight clothes, but surprisingly without the creepy sock puppets.

It’s then that you realize just how much things have changed; how life moves on with or without you.

And you see the tiny bit of longing and questioning in Mabel’s eyes and you breathe out a heavy breath and mutter, “Go.”

“What?” She sounds startled, confused. You feel her gaze on you but you keep staring at Gabe, slowly getting further and further away.

You gesture towards him and say, with more emphasis this time, your chest aching, “ _Go_.”

A wave of understanding washes over her, and she bites her lip and hooks an arm through yours, laying her head on your shoulder and swinging her legs back and forth. She mumbles, “Nah, that’s okay.”

A beat passes and you sigh quietly, “You’re gonna have to go eventually, you know.” You both ignore the silent  _be with someone else_  smushed in there.

“Yeah,” Mabel mutters. She presses closer to you. “But for now, I’d rather just stay here and enjoy the view with my bro.”

Gabe has gotten so far away now that you can barely make him out, and it looks like the sun is swallowing him whole.

From downstairs you hear a gruff shout of, “Kids! I can’t find the remote again and I refuse to watch another marathon of  _The Duchess Approves_!”

You snort simultaneously, sitting in a comfortable silence for another minute. Finally, you sigh and start to get up, but Mabel tugs you back down.

She presses a soft kiss on the corner of your mouth and breathes, “Love you, bro-bro.”

You turn your head so that your noses touch. A pause and then, “Love you, too, Mabes.”

You both close your eyes and and rest your foreheads against each other, your fingers entangled, as the sun finally disappears.

/

The attic feels smaller, more cramped, and maybe that’s just because you’re not twelve anymore and your legs are just a little too long for your old, creaky twin bed now.

You roll over onto your side and your gaze jumps around from Mabel’s outdated Sev'ral Timez posters to an old, forgotten ball of pink yarn on the floor to the faded scratch ‘n sniff sticker on her headboard, and finally, to her.

She’s already looking at you, sadness etched into her features, her chest moving up and down slowly.

The room is stuffy and when she speaks her words seem to suspend between you in the heavy, languid air.

“Please be okay.”

Your breath hitches in your throat and your eyes flash to an angry, distraught, distant, terrified Mabel in your dad’s old too-big Windows 95 shirt, looking at you with too much fear in her mind and like you held the answers to everything.

And you don’t want her to ever become that again. You want to be okay for her for the next few moments in this late-night haze because she needs this.

So you smile, closed-lipped and crinkly-eyed, and amusedly say, “Goodnight, stupid.”

Mabel lets out a surprised chuckle and her eyes soften. “Goodnight, stupid.”

You switch off the light and you’re not okay, and neither is she, but you will be.

She’ll be fine and you’ll be numb, but those are the same thing, anyway.

 


End file.
